Aurelia Cortés Peyron

Seed*

Not yet

it hasn’t arrived yet

the signal and there is no way

of knowing its time

the still, cupped, permeable time

–there is no deadline

inertia is not something you just cultivate–

a turn of the sun up there

–the sun, yet another unknown–

and the rumor of roots

lulling me to sleep until

isomorphous

–that’s the word I dreamt of–

an urgent message

identical on both sides

the instructions:

open palpate feel for

room temperature a trace

dig into blindly at first only

one axis

only one appendix rope

sensitive to the least startled movement

underground make your way

a crackling root growing

in only one direction

no stretch marks

and a tongue to tell

if the circumstances are auspicious.

First one

afterwards always even

numbers multiplied exponentially

fix with threads

each length of the thirsty road

expand

find minerals

up there it will be different

up there among the birds

a firm sky to hold on to

and the fruits

whose colors are unsayable

for now

prepare for the vertical stay

a cylindrical way of living

for being a tree

(petals are for remembering

how it was to sleep under a dome

its corners close together

like a folded napkin’s)

where does it end

this tunnel

it doesn’t

you have to open it

with your fingertips

–that, I didn’t know–

we crumble outwards

to leave: depart wide open

dicotyledoneous

I gave birth to myself

from a scar

two first born leaves

a pair of lungs like premature fruits

two iliac crests the husk

a Rorschach stain

in this hand, look

I wrote down a genealogy

a map with instructions

that got washed away

(my other hand a smooth stone).

I dress myself in bones

Junction of hollow

a porous start where the day breaks

in another womb

I exuded fingernails and corals

I joined together bones

that were floating adrift like islands

and little feral stones

I grew twigs and put together cages

for newly born

soft organs

to become whole

I even formed teeth

hidden like the pit

inside an olive

vertebra upon vertebra

tuning its pegs

I built a spine

a question mark

a smoke signal

rising upwards:

a monolith

but no roots

fingers to thread the needle

in a fine choreography

of oppositions

I entrenched myself to the marrow

polished this first spark

of dry sticks

I became a conflation

of mud salt volatile liquids

calcium and skin

in balance:

homeostasis

but still

it still instills it seeps through

it sings through the reed

chilling to the bone

and not even

the bones cease to be

flesh that give way.

From “Map body”

2 (a second look)

A different map

depending on what you’re looking for

this one scorched

a fair copy

of prehistoric clay hands

and backlit antlers

shows:

where it was safe to walk

how to climb the cliff

where

–spot open eye–

does air spring up from

to overflow the lungs

under which bramble to gorge on blackberries

this one offers days that have just been plowed

it indicates when

they will be ripe

the flesh on time

how long the wait

what plague

where did the fire start

what to regret

            that crack

by which strait to cross

to another continent

–the open path left behind–

what stroke caress until the trace

of fingers where I said

let’s go we will arrive there.

3 (a third look)

I dress myself in my blood, I dress you:

I am but yesterday.

A coat that is shed

endometrium

a mud nest

I secured to the wall

without a beak

with borrowed hands

without knowing the ropes

for this warmth

a sole cord

limph oxygen iron

entwined

a beltway

a torrent

I am nothing but now

multiplied

the same flower born many times

a net of doubled strokes

the coordinates

and only one spot

through which we

always flow.

* This selection of poems come from the series expandable self, that was written in close dialogue with the series of paintings of the same name by Mexican visual artist, Sandra Pani, as well as with Sandra herself, during the early stages of the Covid pandemic, between 202 and 2021. The poems “I dress myself in bones” and the series under the title “Body map” are of an ekphrastic nature and make specifc allusions to the body-sized drawings (carbon on paper) by Pani that have the same titles. The translation is mine. I made some adjustments to emulate the repetition of sounds in Spanish (for example, at the end of “I dress myself in bones”, even when that meant to depart a little from literal translation). Other decisions were made in order to preserve the somewhat fragmentary or disrupted syntax of the original in Spanish.